Arboriculture: Managing trees
The arboriculture team is an integral part of the highways service. Our main focus is to manage any trees that affect the safe use of the highway. This involves investigating trees on both our land and private land where there may be a concern about safety or damage to the highway.
We have teams available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to respond to emergency callouts, particularly following extreme weather events.
We also advise on tree related legal claims against the Council. We’ll give arboricultural advice for new developments and highway layouts, and for schools or countryside sites. We also provide consultancy services to other local authorities.
Trees provide rich economic, environmental, and social benefits to all and no more so than on the highway. Hampshire County Council is committed to proactively planting trees through our Climate change strategy and Tree strategy.
We seek to replace trees we have had to fell for safety or damage reasons and we proactively plant new trees.
This season we will plant 2,800 trees throughout the county. These are large trees, several years old and already around three metres in height. Over 85% of all trees we plant are new plantings – creating new areas of woodland. A dedicated planting team seek out new sites on the highway network where trees are most needed, such as in areas of high air pollution within urban areas, and ensure suitable species are planted.